u/Chemical_Ear6156

I’ll list my favourite books below. Not super cohesive but it’s just the top five ones I found enjoyable. I honestly don’t read that much, and it’s a problem because I’m like 17 and should not be watching TV all day. Basically my favourite books (and movies) are usually like sci fi/ horror/ comedy/ either books written awhile ago or books that have time travel or historical elements. The invisible man is my favourite book and movie adaptation followed closely by the Princess Bride, super funny and also really cool. I just don’t like being bored. Call me a brainrotter but I cannot stand being bored by anything, I am NOT an intellectual. 😭

1: The invisible man - HG wells
2: The Princess Bride - William Goldman
3: Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
4: Frankenstein- Junji Ito
5: The ministry of time - Kaliane Bradley

There were comments literally mentioning fetuses and ‘well humans can actually consent to having their flesh sampled’. Guys I think we’re losing the plot. You’re telling me that cannibalism is just fine now? People in the comments were like ‘well eating meat really isn’t different from eating human babies’ like guys I think it is. I feel like I’m going insane. I mean some of it was obviously jokes but… I dunno some of these guys seemed very serious

I’d consider myself plant based now I still don’t like eat animal products or whatever. But my mind keeps circling back to that conversation. I feel like the vegan subreddit just doesn’t do enough to stop racism from getting to the front of the page. I don’t think veganism is racist at all, but I think there is seriously not enough moderation on online forums. This is partly why I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘full vegan’ or anything like that. I just feel like a lot of super strict vegans neglect human issues for animal ones. I care about both.

I feel like there is a lot of hatred to specifically native Americans on vegan forums because both vegans and non vegans use them as a talking point and end up dragging in natives to every conversation. Which ultimately leads to a huge spotlight being put on a very small population. The criticism is usually entirely centred around cultural meals or hunting instead of bigger issues like I don’t know, mass farming? I’d argue hunting is greatly more ethical than farming and kills way less animals. Even if I don’t eat meat either. And yet natives somehow manage to be a large talking point in vegan spaces. The amount of times I’ve heard a non native person say something like ‘well from the way I understand native culture, they should do this:’ is crazy.

And I won’t deny that the reason the americas were colonized was for land and resources. But what these vegans don’t realize is the reason colonists felt it okay to take over specifically native land with the brute force and violence that they used was because the natives were ‘different’. Also that whole argument can be completely disproved by residential schools. Because how does kidnapping kids equal more farm land in a country that has ALREADY been taken over? Or the constant kidnapping of native women and kids today? Or the fact that they passed rewards to slaughter every buffalo and literally just leave it there to waste just so they could starve natives off?? That doesn’t sound like something done for meat. If it was, they probably would have eaten the buffalos not stacked them on top of eachother to rot. This person just completely denied racism had any part in it.

So I’m Canadian and I’m pretty used to flannels, band Ts, sweaters, skirts, denim/ corduroy pants, and shorts. But Armenia is going to be hotter in the summer than where I’m from. So I’ll probably have to invest in less warm clothes. What exactly do young women (18-25) usually wear? Not as in I believe all counties have a specific dress code everyone must follow— but I do recognize that certain places lean more towards athletic wear/ casual or to more ‘smart casual’ or dressy on an average basis. Like where I’m from, it’s pretty heavy on just extremely casual. It’s also unusual but definitely not unwelcome to see someone really sharply dressed just walking around. It’s just that most people are in sweats.

I’m 17 and saving up for school. And at the moment, even high admissions Canadian schools have gpa cutoffs I can’t really do. But I’ve been practicing art for years and want to study it at university level. Is there any realistic path for me? Also I have some ethical concerns with living in countries that export lots of weapons, because I don’t want my tax dollars going to hurting anybody.

Ps: moving is no big deal for me, I already live alone and provide for myself and I’m pretty good at managing homesickness.

So I hate tofu. It grosses me out. I’m already a vegetarian but I’m gonna cut out dairy too. No I’m not a vegan but vegetarians still eat dairy so I figured I’m in the middle now. The only issue is I live in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, I’m 17 years old and I don’t have a drivers license, and I’m burning upwards of 3000 kcal a day (I’m 117 lbs now I was 120 lbs a week and a half ago) for my full time job + walking to the grocery store which takes an hour and a half uphill and even there is kind of a big nothing burger because it’s hardly open and more like a gas station. That leaves my protein with beans, peanut butter, and eggs. But I don’t have a stove so eggs are off the table for now. Lately I’ve kind of been forgetting to eat because works been keeping me busy but I’m starting to feel it and it’s been taking me longer to stop being sore in the mornings. Can I reasonably survive on just toast, peanut butter, jam, rice, beans, frozen vegetables and oats? (I hate oats but I have them anyways because they’re fast) or like what else is there that I could reasonably find in a town with under 1000 people thats far away from other towns??

Okay so for some context here’s same stuff I usually eat;
Protein oatmeal (6g) with a spoon of peanut butter, rice with soy sauce and vegetables, bread and peanut butter, pasta (but now I’m not really sure what to put on it?? I used to out some jarred sauce and powdered cheese but idk) and I think that’s it. It’s a lot of the same stuff lmao but I’d really appreciate some meal ideas because this is getting rough

What I’m concerned about is the cost. It seems like my CAD will take me along way, but will that negatively affect Armenians? Should I focus on making money at a job in Armenia so that I don’t harm the economy? To be fair I don’t have much money relative to Canada. I work minimum wage. I’d overall like some advice on how I would be received? I’m fully willing to put a lot of time and effort into integrating into Armenian culture for my stay if I can. I don’t want to burden on locals.

I don’t really like living in Canada, not that it’s a bad place. My life is really good. I’m just scared of never experiencing anything in my life and always staying in the same place forever. And I’ve always wanted to try school somewhere else for a little while. I’ve already moved out of my parents house on my own into a different province working full time at an entry level job. I understand that’s a pretty specific scenario a lot of people wouldnt find themselves in at my age. It’s been a learning experience and I’ve had to cut back on most things. I am in a very rural place (under 1000 people and surrounded by wilderness) and I have to walk 6 km up a mountain if I need grocery restocking. The things to do are a little scarce because there’s not many people, but it’s a very beautiful area. The work itself is physically demanding and a lot of it is outside in the sun or rain. I usually go to bed with a sore back, feet, and legs.

What matters to me is living in a place where I feel as though my tax dollars are going towards a good cause, which I understand is a bit unrealistic in this world, but it does really matter to me. Second to that, I’m willing to work hard and for long periods of time so long as I can make enough to live with a roommate. Truthfully my grades are bad. But I’ve been practicing art for a very long time and I’ve undergone mentorships. So I’m hoping there are schools out there willing to look past my academic failures so long as I prove my commitment to learning art.

Ideally I would like to live somewhere cold, but I’m okay with hot places too. And also somewhere walkable ideally. I walk a lot, it’s my primary means of transportation. And I also really like cities, I’ve never lived in a city before. But I also get that cities are expensive. And of course a place that is safe for women because I’m a woman. My parents are well off and will 100% help me return to Canada if something happens, but I am paying my tuition or at least most of it and I am going to be paying for my own rent and food etc from 18 onward. Also I don’t want to burden locals at all and I’m fully willing to learn another language and attempt to fully integrate into a different culture if need be.

I believe fashion is inherently political, but I also just really enjoy this specific way of dressing and have since I was little (I’m 17 now)

I would not consider myself explicitly DARK academia, or vintage, or any real overtly specific aesthetic. But my clothes do take direct inspiration from aesthetics like these. It’s like a fusion of them both, along with softer aesthetics and cozy ones. All of which have a pretty significant overlap. I don’t think it’s realistic for anyone to conform solely to one aesthetic for the rest of their life.

The figure of my clothes is largely influenced by the 1920s, 60’s, and by modern street wear (drop waists, dramatically oversized tops and bottoms, knee length skirts) While the pieces themselves are ambiguous of any particular decade, but undeniably classical inspired. (Button up shirts, knits, jeans, skirts— corduroy, wool, cotton, tweed— argyle, plaid, floral etc) as in, if we were to take a line and on one end write ‘modernly sporty’, my clothes would be very far on the other end. I’m really not athletic at all, certainly not enough to base the way I dress off of athletic wear. The clothes are also based heavily on the media I consume. I’m a big fan of old Hollywood and I get a lot of inspiration from my favourite actresses/ movies. I’ve always had a fascination with history, but more so beauty and fashion history than anything else. Ever since I was little I loved learning about different historical styles.

I’m just wondering now, what am I actually conveying with my clothes? For the longest time I had a specific idea of what it represented, but I never really thought too deeply about what it meant socially. I thought of my clothes as classy, a bit ‘smart’, versatile, feminine, and more cute than sexy. I never really subscribed to the idea that in order to be feminine, you have to explicitly sexualize yourself or show skin. So most of my clothes are unstructured, figureless, and either long or loose and obscuring.

But ‘classy’ and ‘smart’ clothes only exist because of association, and the clothes I’m wearing are directly tied to very Eurocentric ideas of what intelligence looks like. Not to mention, ‘classy’. Sure my clothes are all second hand, but I did routinely think of the way I wore them as classy. Classy to who? Or to what? Back when I first adopted dressing this way, I thought of it as the far opposite of the overly casual fashion that I saw around school. Since most people only wore sweats and T shirts, and I was a bit underwhelmed by how casual everything was and how there wasn’t much variety.

Basically, is the aesthetic of this widespread enough to not carry real weight (despite all of what I said, knits, button ups, and skirts are some of the most versatile and timeless clothes ever and are unlikely to really become overtly dated to any specific period for a long time) or, if it did, does that matter morally? By writing this, I’m assuming that that would be a bad thing. But is it really a bad thing if so many people of colour, including myself, are now being included in it? Why should we have to ditch something just because it used to not be targeted to us?

All of these clothes are older styles being redone in a modern context. If there is moral weight to that, is there also moral weight to period dramas, old movies, old songs or anything of the sort? I don’t think so, because even though horrible things happened in those eras, good things happened too. Plus, it’s not like native people just stopped existing from 1800 onwards and suddenly reappeared today. My grandparents were probably dressed in a way that anatomically similar to what my clothes are like anyways.

But I’d still like someone to weigh in. Preferably someone who may have also thought about the same thing.